Public Secrets

by Nora Roberts

  people in our home. Your family was never enough for you, and now he’s gone. You had to have more, more people, more music. Always more. And one of those people you let into our home killed my baby.”

  He couldn’t speak. If she had taken a knife and slashed him from heart to gut there might have been less pain. Certainly less shock. They stood, with the empty crib between them.

  “He didn’t let the monsters in.” Emma stood in the doorway, her books dangling from their strap, her eyes dark against her white skin. “Da didn’t let the monsters in.” Before Brian could speak, she was rushing down the hall, her sobs trailing behind her.

  “Good job,” Brian managed to say while his jaw clenched and unclenched. “Since you want to be alone, I’ll take Emma and go.”

  She wanted to call after him, but couldn’t. Tired, much too tired, she sank into the rocker again.

  IT TOOK HIM AN HOUR to calm Emma. When her tears had put her to sleep, he began his calls. His decision made, he ended with Pete.

  “We’re leaving for New York tomorrow,” he said shortly. “Emma and I. We’ll hook up with Johnno, take a few days. I need to find her a good school and arrange security. Once she’s settled, and safe, we’ll go to California and begin rehearsals. Fix up the tour, Pete, and make it a long one.” He took a hard pull of whiskey. “We’re ready to rock.”

  Chapter Twelve

  SHE DOESN’T WANT to go back.” Brian watched Emma wander around the rehearsal hall with her new camera. He’d given it to her during their tearful goodbye at Saint Catherine’s Academy for Girls in upstate New York.

  “She’d barely been there a month before this spring-break thing,” Johnno reminded him. But he felt a twinge for the little girl as she snapped a picture of Stevie’s Martin on its stand in the corner. “Give her a bit of time to adjust.”

  “It seems all we do is adjust.” It had been eight weeks since he’d walked out on Bev, and he still ached for her. The women he’d taken since were like a drug, the drugs like women. Both only eased the pain for moments at a time.

  “You could call her,” Johnno suggested, reading his partner’s thoughts with the ease of a long relationship.

  “No.” He’d considered it, more than once. But the papers had been full of their separation, and his appetite since. He doubted if he and Bev would have anything to say to each other that wouldn’t make things worse. “My concern now’s for Emma. And the tour.”

  “Both’ll be smashing.” Johnno glanced over, giving a pointed look toward Angie. “With a few exceptions.”

  Brian merely shrugged and began to noodle on the piano. “If she clinches that movie deal, she’ll be out of our hair.”

  “Smarmy little bitch. Did you see that rock she had P.M. spring for?” Johnno tilted his head and affected an upper-class accent. “Too, too tacky, dearie.”

  “Draw the claws. As long as P.M.’s bonkers over her, we’re stuck. And we’ve more to worry about than our little Angie.” He watched Stevie come back into the hall.

  He was spending more and more time in the bathroom, Brian noted. And it didn’t have anything to do with his bladder. Whatever Stevie had jabbed or swallowed or snorted this time had him flying. He stopped by Emma to give her a quick swing, then picked up his guitar. As the amp was off, his frantic riff was soundless.

  “Best to wait until he’s down to talk to him about it,” Johnno suggested. “If you can catch him when he is.” He started to add something, then decided that Brian had enough on his mind. It would hardly do any good to tell him what he’d heard before they’d left New York.

  Imagine Jane Palmer writing a book. Of course someone else would do the work, like putting sentences together. Still, he imagined Jane would get a princely sum for it. And whatever she said in her little public diary wasn’t likely to please Brian. Best to let Pete handle it, he decided, and not hit Brian with what was already going on until after the tour.

  Emma paid little attention to the rehearsal when it got back into swing. She’d heard all the songs before, dozens of times. Most of them were from the album her da and the others had made when they’d been in California before. She’d been allowed to go to the studio a few times. Once Bev had brought Darren.

  She didn’t want to think of Darren because it hurt too much. Then she was struck with a miserable wave of guilt because she tried to block him out.

  She missed Charlie, too. She’d left him behind in London in Darren’s crib. She hoped Bev would take care of him. And maybe one day, when they went back home, Bev would talk to her again, and laugh, as she once had.

  She didn’t understand very much about penance, but she thought leaving Charlie behind was only right.

  Then there was school. She was certain that having to go to that place, so far away from everyone she loved best, was her punishment for not taking care of Darren as she’d promised.

  She remembered being punished before, the slaps and shouts. It seemed easier, she thought now, because once the slaps were over, so was the punishment. There seemed no end to her current banishment.

  Da didn’t call it a punishment, she mused. He said she was going to a good school where she would learn to be smart. Where she would be safe. There were men there to watch her. Emma hated that. They were big, silent men with bored eyes. Not like Johnno and the others. She wanted to go from city to city with them, even if it meant going on airplanes. She wanted to stay in hotels and bounce on the beds and order tea from room service. But she was going back to school, back to the sisters with the kind eyes and firm hands, back to morning prayers and grammar lessons.

  She glanced back as her father peeled into “Soldier Blues.” It was another song about the war, its hard-edged lyrics set to a harder-edged beat. She didn’t know why it appealed to her. Perhaps it was P.M.’s cymbal-crashing style or Stevie’s frantic, blood-pumping guitar. But when Johnno’s voice merged with Brian’s, she lifted her camera.

  She liked to take pictures. It never occurred to her that the camera was too expensive and difficult to master for a child of her age. Just as it had never occurred to her that giving it had been a sop to Brian’s guilt for tucking her away in an obscure school.

  “Emma.”

  She turned to study a tall, dark man. He wasn’t one of the bodyguards, she realized, but there was something familiar about his face. Then she remembered. She smiled a little because he had been kind when he’d come to see her in the hospital, and he hadn’t embarrassed her when she’d cried on his shoulder.

  “Do you remember me?” Lou asked her.

  “Yes. You’re the policeman.”

  “That’s right.” He put a hand on the boy beside him, trying to draw his son’s attention away from the group rehearsing. “This is Michael. I told you about him.”

  She brightened even more, but was too shy to ask him about roller-skating off rooftops. “Hello.”

  “Hi.” He gave her a quick glance, a fleeting smile. It was all he could spare before his eyes were riveted to the four men in the center of the hall.

  “We need the horns,” Brian began when he signaled a halt. “Can’t get the full sound without them.” His heart stopped when he spotted the man beside Emma, then slowly, thickly began beating again. “Lieutenant.”

  “Mr. McAvoy.” After a quick warning glance at his son, Lou crossed the hall. “I’m sorry to interrupt your rehearsal, but I wanted to speak to you again, and your daughter, if possible.”

  “Do you—”

  “No. I have very little to add to what you already know. But if I could have a few minutes of your time?”

  “Sure. You chaps want to go for lunch? I’ll catch up with you.

  “I could hang around,” Johnno offered.

  “No.” Brian gave his shoulder a quick squeeze. “Thanks.”

  Emma caught the look in Michael’s eyes. She’d seen the same expression in those of the girls at school when they’d discovered who her father was. Her lips curved a little. She liked his face, the slightly cro
oked nose, the dear gray eyes.

  “Would you like to meet them?”

  Michael had to wipe his sweaty palms on his jeans. “Yeah. That’d be boss.”

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Lou said to Brian as he noted that Emma had spared him from asking. “I brought my son along. Not strictly procedure, but—”

  “I understand.” Brian took a long, envious look at the boy as Michael beamed up at Johnno. Would Darren have been so bright, so sturdy at eleven? “Why don’t I send him an album? The new one won’t be released for a couple of weeks yet. He’ll be the hit of the schoolyard.”

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  “It’s nothing. I’ve a strong feeling that you’ve put more time in on what happened to Darren than you’re required to.”

  “Neither one of us has nine-to-five jobs, Mr. McAvoy.”

  “Right. I always hated cops.” He gave a thin smile. “I guess you do until you really need one. I’ve hired a private-detective firm, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  It was strange, but Brian felt the easiness of his own laugh. “Yes, I suppose you do. They reported to me that you’ve covered more ground than five cops might in the last months. That’s the only thing they’ve been able to tell me that you haven’t. One would almost think you want them as much as I do.”

  “He was a beautiful boy, Mr. McAvoy.”

  “Yes, by Jesus he was.” He looked down at the guitar still in his hands. Because he wanted to fling it, he set it with exaggerated care on its stand. “What would you like to talk to me about?”

  “Just a few details I’d like to go over again. I know it’s repetitious.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I’d also like to talk to Emma again.”

  The easiness passed as quickly as it had come. “She can’t tell you anything.”

  “Maybe I haven’t asked the right questions yet.”

  Brian ran a hand through his hair. He’d had several inches cut off and was still surprised when his hand ran through it and into air. “Darren’s gone, and I can’t risk Emma’s state of mind. She’s delicate at the moment. She’s only six, and for the second time in her life, she’s been uprooted. I’m sure you’ve read that my wife and I are separated.”

  I’m sorry.

  “It’s hardest on Emma. I don’t want her upset again.”

  “I won’t push.” He tabled his idea of suggesting hypnosis.

  Enjoying her role as hostess, such as it was, Emma brought Michael over to her father. “Da, this is Michael.”

  “Hello, Michael.”

  “Hello.” Finding his tongue tied in knots, Michael could only grin foolishly.

  “Do you like music?”

  “Oh yeah. I’ve got lots of your records.” He wanted desperately to ask for an autograph, but was afraid he’d seem like a jerk. “It was great hearing you play, and all. Just about the greatest.”

  “Thanks.”

  Emma took a picture. “My da can send you a copy,” she said, admiring Michael’s chipped front tooth.

  WHEN LOU LEFT, leading his reluctant son out of the rehearsal hall, he had the beginnings of a headache and a nasty case of frustration. He’d kept his promise and hadn’t pushed Emma. He hadn’t been able to. The moment he had mentioned the night her brother had died her eyes had gone blank and her body had stiffened. Instinct told him she had seen or heard something, but her memory of that night was already blurred. It was peopled with monsters and snarling shadows.

  He didn’t care to admit that breaking the case depended on a terrified six-year-old whose memory of that night, according to the psychologists he’d interviewed, might never return.

  There was still the pizza man, Lou thought grimly. It had taken him two days to locate the right shop and the clerk who’d been working the graveyard shift. He’d remembered the order for fifty pizzas, and had considered it a joke. But he’d also remembered the name of the person who’d placed the order.

  Tom Fletcher, a session musician who played both alto and tenor sax, had had a yen for pizza that night. It had taken weeks to track him down, and weeks more to put through the paperwork to bring the musician back from his gig in Jamaica.

  Lou preferred pinning his hopes there. Whoever had been in Darren’s room hadn’t come back down the main stairs or climbed out of the window. That left the kitchen stairs where Tom Fletcher had been trying to convince the night clerk to deliver fifty pizzas with everything.

  “Hey, Dad, that was the best.” Michael dragged his feet on the sidewalk to give himself a few more moments. He pulled open the door of his father’s ’68 Chevelle, craning his neck to look at the upper windows of the building at his back. “The guys are going to go nuts when I tell them. It’s okay to tell them now, right? Everybody knows you’ve got the case.”

  “Yeah.” Lou pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. He wasn’t sure if the headache had been brought on by tension or the furious pulse of music. “Everybody knows.” He’d burrowed his way through a trio of press conferences.

  “How come they got all those security guards?” Michael wanted to know.

  “What guards?”

  “Those.” As his father settled into the driver’s seat, Michael pointed to the four dark-suited, broad-shouldered men near the entrance of the building.

  “How do you know they’re guards?”

  “Come on.” Michael rolled his eyes. “You can always tell cops. Even rent-a-cops.”

  Lou wasn’t sure if he should wince or laugh. He wondered how his captain would feel if he knew the average eleven-year-old could make an undercover cop. “To keep people from hassling them, maybe hurting them. And the little girl,” Lou added. “Someone might try to kidnap her.”

  “Jeez. You mean they’ve got to have guards all the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bummer,” Michael murmured sincerely, no longer sure he wanted to pursue the idea of becoming a rock star. “I’d hate to have people watching me all the time. I mean, how could you have any secrets?”

  “It’s tough.”

  As his father pulled away from the curb, Michael cast one last look over his shoulder. “Can we go to McDonald’s?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “I guess she doesn’t get to do that much.”

  “What?”

  “The little kid. Emma. I guess she doesn’t get to go to McDonald’s.”

  “No.” Lou ruffled his boy’s hair. “I guess not.”

  It took only a few minutes to get Michael settled in with a cheeseburger, fries, and a shake. Lou left his son in the booth to call in. From the phone outside the window he could see Michael dousing more ketchup on the burger. “Kesselring,” he said. “I’ll be in the station in an hour.”

  “I got some bad news for you, Lou.”

  “What else is new?”

  “It’s Fletcher, your pizza man.”

  “Didn’t he make it into L.A.?”

  “Yeah, he made it in. Sent a couple of uniforms to pick him up this morning for questioning. Seems they were about six hours too late. He’d been dead that long.”

  “Shit.”

  “Looks like a standard OD. He had the works and some top-grade heroin. We’re waiting on the coroner’s report.”

  “That’s great. That’s fucking great.” He slammed a hand against the wall of the booth, hard enough to make a mother hurry her three children by. “Have the lab boys been over his hotel room?”

  “Top to bottom.”

  “Give me the address.” He fumbled for his notebook. “I have to drop my kid at home, after that I’ll have a look.”

  Lou noted it down, swore again, and banged the receiver. He opened the door, then to give himself a moment, leaned against it. Through the window he could see his son cheerfully plowing through the cheeseburger.